South Carolina sweeps LSU tennis teams

South Carolina sweeps LSU tennis teams

COLUMBIA, S.C. — The No. 33 LSU men’s tennis team closed its weekend road trip with a 4-1 loss to No. 25 South Carolina at the Carolina Tennis Center on Sunday.

“Splitting on the road in the SEC is good at this point when you look at the quality of the teams,” LSU coach Jeff Brown said. “You’d like to win them all, but you can’t. Florida played well in singles. We’ll get back to Baton Rouge and get recharged for the week.”

All three doubles matches came down to the wire.

On court one, Olivier Borsos and Roger Anderson defeated South Carolina’s Chip Cox and Tsvetan Mihov 9-8, but South Carolina’s Andrew Adams and Thiago Pinheiro bested LSU’s Chris Simpson and Boris Arias 9-7 on court three to even the doubles matches.

South Carolina (15-7, 5-3) turned the momentum in singles as Mihov got a 6-2, 6-2 victory on court one over LSU’s Simpson. South Carolina took a 2-1 lead after Menzies defeated Arias 6-3, 6-2 on court six. The Gamecocks extended their lead to 3-1 after Cox bested LSU’s Mark Bowtell 6-3, 6-3.

South Carolina’s Koch clinched the match by defeating LSU’s Trinh on court five 6-3, 7-6 (6).

LSU starts a nine-match homestand Tuesday with a doubleheader against No. 55 Tulane at 2 p.m. and UNO at 7 p.m.

The Gamecocks (11-8, 4-5) got the first five victories of the day, and Josefin Andersson defeated Frankenberger 6-0, 6-4, 6-2 to clinch the match.

“We need to cut out the unforced errors,” LSU coach Julia S. Sell said. “I feel like we really had a lot of mental lapses on a lot of courts today. We’re a team in development. (The team is) not used to working this hard day in and day out, and today was the first time I saw them be mentally fatigued.”